Abstract
Democratic Protests and New Forms of Collective Action constructs disobedience as a right and a duty: an integral part not only of the defence of human rights but also of conceptualising an alternate model of social reality. Published in the series Contributions to Political Science, this anthology sits at the intersections of law, sociology, and political theory. A refreshing mix of theory and praxis, the volume draws upon Italian protests to leaven its theoretical density with geopolitical specificity. This reviewer acknowledges her unfamiliarity with the case studies discussed by Daher et al., but the essays map out their territorial confines amid fluid examinations of the pro(social) dimensions of contemporary collective action. One never quite feels the need to pull up an atlas or history text: This volume sufficiently acquaints even the casual reader with its context.
The essays are categorised in three sections following an introduction by Daher, dealing with definitions, worldwide movements, and collective action during the pandemic, respectively. Daher’s introductory essay offers a bird’s-eye view of the evolution of civil disobedience into (pro)social disobedience before outlining the sections mentioned above. This review examines each, briefly dwelling on essays that were of particular interest, while also tracing the throughline of the anthology, which (re)constructs disobedience as a collective challenge to authority.
The first group of essays analyses the interdisciplinarity of contemporary conceptualisations of collective action, with the interplay of juridical, philosophical, and sociological definitions providing much of the interest. Flam analyses the way in which the reactions of the authorities protested against and the larger public influenced the perception of disobedience as civil or otherwise. Serra discusses the increasing significance of globality in human rights movements with an eye towards the evolution of democracy itself. Sperb Machado’s essay locates disobedience vis-à-vis the tension between fidelity to law and the rule of law. Vecchio studies the Heidelberg proposal and puts forward the radical idea of civil disobedience of the judge. Drigo examines the theoretical challenges posed by the phenomenon of collective disobedience. Finally, Coco’s essay looks at (dis)obedience on an individual scale, studying both the philosophical and psychological tensions and dissonances caused by disobeying rules set by oneself. From the global collective to the collected self, these essays lay the theoretical groundwork for the second part, which is the largest section and—as Daher says—the core of the book.
The second section of the book comprises nine essays, each delving into cases of social disobedience and collectively portraying ways in which citizens and the state encounter one another across the world. Benski’s essay examines feminist protests through the lens of what she dubs ‘breaching’ acts, that is, actions that create a breach in normative socio-cultural structures: She looks at contemporary feminist movements that break tacit silences and reclaim erstwhile slurs, and particularly at the Women in Black collective actions in Israel. Gomez studies the Never Again Museum project begun by the Asociación de Amor, Vida y Salud (ASOVIDA) 1 in Granada, Colombia, in order to highlight the importance of centring victims’ narratives in social memory projects and as a tool of continuing civil disobedience after and despite a calamitous burst of violence. Paterniti’s essay analyses civil pro-social disobedience as resistance to unjust laws—drawing upon case studies of collective and judicial responses to the limitations on homosexual parents in Italian law—as well as the implications of framing such resistance as not only legitimate but legal opposition. Vosyliūtė and Smialowski use the violation of international customs by EU states in the stated cause of migration management as a case study of their assertion that citizens embark upon civil disobedience in response to state-led violation of global norms. Nicolosi’s essay follows from it, examining data gathered through interviews and surveys of pro-migrant networks in Sicily in order to conceptualise pro-social activism in ways that highlight the turn towards compassion, empathy and sociality evidenced in the same. Acevedo-Miño examines the agricultural crisis in Argentina as civil disobedience, tracing a genealogy of civil disobedience from Thoreau through Gandhi and King and simultaneously analysing the aforementioned crisis as a public and political act of noncompliance. Giannini et al study the role of emotional responses in motivating and sustaining collective action—drawing upon the protests around the trans-Adriatic Pipeline in the Apulia region—as well as in creating heterogeneous political collectives through appeals to territorial and ecological ties. Merico and Crescenzo’s reading of Keniston’s socio-psychological analysis of American student activism in the 1960s opens up new paths for youth engagement in collective movements, particularly acknowledging the role of digitality in contemporary social disobedience. In the final essay in this section, Raffiotta studies the increasing importance and impatience of private economic entities in their interactions with local markets and polities, positing that supranational integration is required for administrative regulation of such entities.
The third section of this book discusses cases of civil disobedience triggered by the pandemic: The four essays, including one co-authored by Daher, analyse sociopolitical tensions exposed—and to an extent engendered—by the spread of COVID-19 and consequent lockdowns, in administrative and educational sectors, and at their intersection. Sagone’s essay examines the fault lines emergent at the state and regional levels in the handling of the viral spread, and the intervention of the Constitutional Court in favour of a single health response preserving the people’s right to equal health, regardless of customary regional autonomy and consequent coordination. Antonelli and Musolino study the no-Green Pass movement in Italian academia as a possible instance of libertarian radicalisation of students and staff and simultaneously as an act of civil disobedience against authoritarian, discriminatory regimes; the conflation of distrust of state-led medical measures and radical individualisation makes for a fascinating study but does not—as the authors themselves say—entirely counter their very small sample size. Gamuzza and Leonora’s essay presents initial evidence of the overlapping of home-schooling circles and COVID-19 protestors, examining socio-economic locations and political affiliations of home-schoolers, and opening up new analytical trajectories of disobedience in the time of social distancing and media. The final essay by Daher, Mavica, and Scieri maps out a hundred+ protests in favour of and against distance education across Italy, highlighting the complexity of state responses to health and education crises and the necessity of retaining and re-examining the traces of dissent even after said crises seem to have passed.
The interdisciplinary range and lucidity of the essays comprising Democratic Protests and New Forms of Collective Action made the book an engaging, if at times challenging, read that requires no great knowledge of Italian geopolitics. Of particular interest to this reviewer were the essays by Vecchio (for its treatment of the literary judicial problematics of Antigone as a figure of resistance and Portia as one of manoeuvring), Paterniti (for its problematisation of the legal aspect of civil disobedience as well as courtly interventions in the matter of homosexual parenthood), Acevedo-Miño (for its discussion of the agricultural crisis as civil disobedience, with all its implications in the Indian context), and finally Gamuzza and Leonora (for its nuanced analysis of the intersections of political autonomy, parental autocracy, and increasing distrust in the administrative infrastructure). The ideas discussed are broadly applicable globally and of significance for anyone invested in the theory and praxis of civil pro-social disobedience. As such, this book is likely to be of interest to a broad range of academic and lay readers.